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Pipefitter Scott Zarembski, originally from Detroit, has prospered by working in the oil industry in the Canadian city of Edmonton. Canadian employers and officials have been recruiting U.S. workers to fill a skilled labor shortage. Jason Franson / Los Angeles Times/MCT

EDMONTON, Alberta — With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipefitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city.

He’d heard there was work in western Canada. Turns out he’d heard right. Within days he was wearing a hard hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 miles away in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had earned almost $50,000. That was 2009. And he’s still there.

“If you want to work, you can work,” said Zarembski, 45. “And it’s just getting started.”
U.S. workers, Canada wants you.

Here in the western province of Alberta, energy companies are racing to tap the region’s vast deposits of oil sands. Canada is looking to double production by the end of the decade. To do so it will have to lure more workers — tens of thousands of them — to this cold and sparsely populated place. The weak U.S. recovery is giving them a big assist.

Canadian employers are swarming U.S. job fairs, advertising on radio and YouTube and using headhunters to lure out-of-work Americans north.
The Great White North might seem a tough sell with winter coming on. But the Canadians have honed their sales pitch: free universal healthcare, good pay, quality schools, retention bonuses and steady work.

The U.S. isn’t the only place Canada is looking for labor. In Alberta, which is expecting a shortage of 114,000 skilled workers by 2021, provincial officials have been courting English-speaking tradespeople from Ireland, Scotland and other European nations. Immigrants from the Philippines, India and Africa have found work in services. But some employers prefer Americans because they adapt quickly, come from a similar culture and can visit their homes more easily.

Since 2010, about 35,000 U.S. workers a year have been issued work permits, according to Canadian immigration statistics. That’s up ?13 percent from earlier in the decade. And that figure is expected to grow as provinces loosen requirements for temporary foreign workers.

Rudolf Kischer, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, said his firm can hardly keep up with the processing of work permits for employers hiring U.S. help.
“We’re the busiest we’ve ever been,” he said.

Many of those workers are heading to where the labor market is hottest: Edmonton.

One of the fastest- growing cities in Canada, this capital city owes its prosperity to the oil sands. Lying a few hours to the north, the sands are a mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen — a heavy, black, viscous petroleum — that must be mined and processed to extract the oil. Alberta’s massive deposits, which rival the conventional crude oil reserves of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, are being developed at breakneck speed to meet the growing global demand for energy.

Edmonton has become a staging ground for oil companies that include Canada’s Suncor Energy, Shell Canada and Chevron Canada. The energy sector has in turn boosted industries such as manufacturing, home building and retailing.
Like a U.S. city
With a population of about 812,000, Edmonton looks a lot like many American cities. There are large strip malls anchored by U.S. retailers such as Costco and Home Depot, and ubiquitous coffee shops — except here Tim Horton’s doughnut shops outnumber Starbucks 3 to 1.

The biggest difference: The unemployment rate here is 4.5 percent, and “We’re Hiring” signs are posted in almost every window.
Moving to a city where the economy is firing on all cylinders was a sharp turn from struggling Motor City, Zarembski said.

Fat paychecks allowed him to ditch his battered Pontiac Grand Am for a late-model Dodge pickup truck. He has vacationed in the Dominican Republic and taken his 14-year-old daughter to Universal Studios in Florida. He’s planning to buy a house in Edmonton’s western suburbs soon.

With so much work available, Zarembski said, trade workers can afford to pick and choose.
Jobs near Fort McMurray, six hours north, are the best-paid; a welder can make up $37 an hour.

The province of Alberta boasts a median household income of $83,000 compared with $50,000 in the U.S. Still, transplants say it’s tough leaving family behind.
“I can’t sugarcoat that I miss my family,” Zarembski said. “I miss my buddies.”

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